Jack Higgins: Thunder Point

“You joined the Provisional IRA, trained in Libya courtesy of Colonel Qaddafi and never looked back.” Branko turned a page. “You finally broke with the IRA. Some disagreement as to strategy.”

“Bunch of old women.” Dillon reached across and helped himself to more Krug.

“Beirut, the PLO, even the KGB. You really do believe in spreading your services around.” Branko laughed suddenly in a kind of amazement. “The underwater attack on those two Palestinian gunboats in Beirut in 1990. You were responsible for that? But that was for the Israelis.”

“I charge very reasonable rates,” Dillon said.

“Fluent German, Spanish and French, oh, and Irish.”

“We mustn’t forget that.”

“Reasonable Arabic, Italian and Russian.” Branko closed the file. “Is it true you were responsible for the mortar attack on No. 10 Downing Street during the Gulf War when the British Prime Minister, John Major, was meeting with the War Cabinet?”

“Now do I look as if I’d do a thing like that?”

Branko leaned back and looked at him seriously. “How do you see yourself, my friend, gun for hire like one of those old Westerns, riding into town to clean things up single-handed?”

“To be honest, Major, I never think about it.”

“And yet you took on a job like this present affair for a bunch of well-meaning amateurs and for no pay?”

“We all make mistakes.”

“You certainly did, my friend. Those boxes on the plane. Morphine ampoules on top, Stinger missiles underneath.”

“Jesus.” Dillon laughed helplessly. “Now who would have thought it.”

“They say you have a genius for acting, that you can change yourself totally, become another person with a look, a gesture.”

“No, I think that was Laurence Olivier.” Dillon smiled.

“And in twenty years, you’ve never seen the inside of a cell.”

“True.”

“Not any longer, my friend.” Branko opened a drawer, took out a two-hundred pack of Rothmans cigarettes and tossed them across. “You’re going to need those.” He glanced at Zekan and said in Serbo-Croatian, “Take him to his cell.”

Dillon felt the Sergeant’s hand on his shoulder pulling him up and propelling him to the door. As Zekan opened it Branko said, “One more thing, Mr. Dillon. The firing squad operates most mornings here. Try not to let it put you off.”

“Ah, yes,” Dillon said. “Ethnic cleansing, isn’t that what you call it?”

“The reason is much simpler than that. We just get short of space. Sleep well.”

They went up a flight of stone steps, Zekan pushing Dillon ahead of him. He pulled him to a halt outside an oak door on the passageway at the top, took out a key and unlocked it. He inclined his head and stood to one side and Dillon entered. The room was quite large. There was an army cot in one corner, a table and chair, books on a shelf and, incredibly, an old toilet and in a cubicle in one corner. Dillon went to the window and peered through bars to the courtyard eighty feet below and the pine forest in the near distance.

He turned. “This must be one of your better rooms. What’s the catch?” Then realized he was wasting his time, for the Sergeant had no English.

As if perfectly understanding him Zekan smiled, showing bad teeth, took Dillon’s silver case and Zippo lighter from a pocket and laid them carefully on the table. He withdrew, closing the door, and the key rattled in the lock.

Dillon went to the window and tried the bars, but they seemed firm. Too far down anyway. He opened one of the packs of Rothmans and lit one. One thing was certain. Branko was being excessively kind and there had to be a reason for that. He went and lay on the bed, smoking his cigarette, staring up at the ceiling and thinking about it.

In 1972, aware of the growing problem of terrorism and its effect on so many aspects of life at both political and national level, the British Prime Minister of the day ordered the setting up of a small elite intelligence unit, known simply by the code name Group Four. It was to handle all matters concerning terrorism and subversion in the British Isles. Known rather bitterly in more conventional intelligence circles as the Prime Minister’s private army, it owed allegiance to that office alone.

Brigadier Charles Ferguson had headed Group Four since its inception, had served a number of Prime Ministers, both Conservative and Labour, and had no political allegiance whatsoever. He had an office on the third floor of the Ministry of Defence overlooking Horse Guards Avenue, and was still working at his desk at nine o’clock that night when there was a knock at the door.

“Come in,” Ferguson said, stood up and walked to the window, a large, rather untidy-looking man with a double chin and untidy gray hair who wore a baggy suit and a Guards tie.

As he peered out at the rain toward Victoria Embankment and the Thames, the door opened behind him. The man who entered was in his late thirties, wore a tweed suit and glasses. He could have been a clerk, or even a schoolmaster, but Detective Inspector Jack Lane was neither of these things. He was a cop. Not an ordinary one, but a cop all the same, and after some negotiating, Ferguson had succeeded in borrowing him from Special Branch at Scotland Yard to act as his personal assistant.

“Got something for me, Jack?” Ferguson’s voice was ever so slightly plummy.

“Mainly routine, Brigadier. The word is that the Director General of the Security Services is still unhappy at the Prime Minister’s refusal to do away with Group Four’s special status.”

“Good God, don’t they ever give up, those people? I’ve agreed to keep them informed on a need-to-know basis and to liaise with Simon Carter, the Deputy Director, and that damned MP, the one with the fancy title. Extra Minister at the Home Office.”

“Sir Francis Pamer, sir.”

“Yes, well that’s all the cooperation they’re going to get out of me. Anything else?”

Lane smiled. “Actually, I’ve saved the best bit till last. Dillon – Sean Dillon?”

Ferguson turned. “What about him?”

“Had a signal from our contacts in Yugoslavia. Dillon crashed in a light plane this morning, supposedly flying in medical supplies only they turned out to be Stinger missiles. They’re holding him in that castle at Kivo. It’s all here.”

He passed a sheet of paper across and Ferguson put on half-moon spectacles and studied it. He nodded in satisfaction. “Twenty years and the bastard never saw the inside of a prison cell.”

“Well, he’s in one now, sir. I’ve got his record here if you want to look at it.”

“And why would I want to do that? No use to anyone now. You know what the Serbs are like, Jack. Might as well stick it in the dead-letter file. Oh, you can go home now.”

“Good night, sir.”

Lane went out and Ferguson crossed to his drinks cabinet and poured a large Scotch. “Here’s to you, Dillon,” he said softly. “And you can chew on that, you bastard.”

He swallowed the whisky down, returned to his desk and started to work again.

East of Puerto Rico in the Caribbean are the Virgin Islands, partly British like Tortola and Virgin Gorda. Across the water are St. Croix, St. Thomas and St. John, proudly American since 1917 when the United States purchased them from the Danish government for twenty-five million dollars.

St. John is reputed to have been discovered by Columbus on his second voyage to the New World in 1493 and without a doubt is probably the most idyllic island in the entire Caribbean, but not that night as a tropical storm, the tail end of Hurricane Able, swept in across the old town of Cruz Bay, stirring the boats at anchor in the harbor, driving rain across the roof tops, the sky exploding into thunder.